Reaching Out to the YouTube Generation

For most
people outside of Italy, watching the Pope in action and hearing him speak is a
rare opportunity.

Generally, only extraordinary news
is featured, and even then, it often falls short of the full picture. Few
people get to see the busy life of the Pope or the scope of what happens at the
Vatican.

But thanks
to Google and YouTube, much of what the Holy Father says will
now be available at the click of a mouse.

Just about a month ago, the Vatican
— with the help of Internet colossus Google — launched its own YouTube channel.
The launch video — Vatican Communications HD — is a 1 1/2-minute trailer of key
advances in the Church’s coming of age in the modern era of media
communications, beginning with clips from the early days of Vatican Radio,
founded in 1931.

Along with the featured video, an
initial batch of 12 videos captured highlights of recent events at the Vatican,
including a baptismal service at the Sistine Chapel, a traditional
blessing of the lambs whose wool will be used to make ceremonial garments, the
Pope’s reflections on the media as a voice in the service of peace, and a video
about the Internet as “a new way to speak of God.”

The YouTube channel appears in four
languages — Spanish, English, Italian and German — and provides links to other
Vatican-related sites, including Vatican Radio, Vatican Television, the Vatican
itself, which allows access to all documents, departments and councils,
and Vatican City State.

While the embedding and comments
features remain disabled for now because of concerns about how to monitor the
site, viewers are able to communicate with the Vatican via e-mail.

Following the YouTube launch and
timed to coincide with the Jan. 24 feast of St. Francis de Sales,
the patron saint of journalists, Pope Benedict released his
message in advance of the 43rd World Communications Day, dedicated to the theme
“New Technologies, New Relationships: Promoting a Culture of Respect, Dialogue
and Friendship.”

Continuing the example of his
predecessor, John Paul II, the first pope in history to use e-mail, Pope
Benedict, emphasized that “technologies are truly a gift to humanity.”

At the same time, he warned that new
technologies have raised “negative and hitherto unimaginable questions and
problems,” and often “exercise a negative influence on people’s consciences and
choices, definitively conditioning their freedom and their very lives.”

Pope Benedict said new technologies
have extraordinary potential for building new relationships and friendships “if
they are used to promote human understanding and solidarity.”

Toward that end, he said, “Perhaps
this is a valuable opportunity to reshape it, to make more visible, as my
venerable predecessor Pope John Paul II said, the essential and
indispensable elements of the truth about the human person.”

Vatican spokesman Father
Federico Lombardi, the director of both Vatican Radio and the Vatican Television
Center, said the aim of the YouTube channel is to keep open lines of
communication and dialogue, and “to make the Church’s material available to
people of all countries and of all religious and ideological positions who are
interested.”

“Many people around the world want
to know what the Pope thinks, what the Catholic Church proposes for
the great problems of today’s world,” he said.

After more than a year of
preparation at both Vatican Radio and Vatican TV, he said the Church was ready
“to make the leap into the global world.”

By all counts, the Church’s leap
forward has been successful. Father Lombardi said the new venture was off to a
good start.

“We are confident this new way of
engaging the world will be fruitful,” he said. At the end of the first week,
analysts registered some 750,000 hits, with more than 15,000 new subscribers.

English is the most popular channel,
followed by Italian, German and Spanish. Although the initial onslaught of
traffic — more than 93,000 hits on the first day — subsided over the week,
experts say this is to be expected. On the whole, there was an average increase
of page views by 32%. Moreover, traffic for both Vatican Radio and Vatican
Television increased by more than 30%.

Vatican journalist and television
producer Mary Shovlain said that along with evangelizing, another benefit of
going global is that it will help clarify the Vatican’s positions.

“It will be harder for some groups
to misquote the Pope when we can see for ourselves what he is doing and saying.
I know that the Pope or the Vatican being misrepresented in the press often
doesn’t depend on a lack of information, but is a result of prejudice,” she
said. “If critics will enter into this ‘cyber-dialogue’ with the Catholic
Church, I think things could change.”

Like other recent innovations,
including the Vatican’s X3 social-networking site, text messaging from the Pope
for World Youth Day, and the iBreviary approved last December, the new
YouTube channel reflects the Church’s constant desire to communicate
the Gospel message to the world.

Author and theologian Christine
Mugridge, who recently published a book titled John
Paul II — Development of a Theology of Communication, said, “The
Holy Father is well aware of the contemporary reality of a new sense of global
community being formed through the Internet. This community needs to see, hear
and experience the Gospel and to know of the Church’s desire to bring them into
a personal encounter with the living Jesus Christ.”

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